Hair We Are

A long story all about hair and the meaning of hair in our daily lives and our remembering good times about it.

I did not know she was sick, she never told me and she
seemed to pass away quickly. I was stunned when her daughter called me right
after I saw the death notice in the papers. A long and sweet era passed on too.
She and I had been friends for over fifty years. The memories will last another
fifty years. The vase stands in a place of honor in my family room.

So I got to the salon about four in the afternoon on those
Saturdays.I had come there by cab from downtown and the boss paid my cab fare
from there to about eight or so miles to my home. The fare was about $5.25 from
downtown near our harbor now (which was not there then) and I told the cab
driver to take me to the salon which was about four blocks from my home. I had
no car then. Then after I was finished, I walked the four blocks to our home.

Then after she left that salon, I went to one up the street
called Jerome’s and that is when I was going with my boyfriend Jerome. So see,
names do make a difference.

When I got married in 1960, she did not come to the wedding,
but she sent me a crystal water pitcher trimmed in sterling silver designs. I
still have it sitting as a showpiece on a high shelf in the kitchen. When she
passed on almost two years ago, I wrote a eulogy but I was overcome by sadness,
I could not talk to deliver it. Her daughter Amy read it for me.It was about
our constant friendship which in the last twenty years was mainly through phone
calls and letters by the post office. I begged her to get a computer so we
could ‘talk’ via it; she would have no desire to learn to use one. We still
were able through the phone and mail to still love one another. On one of her
letters to me, she wrote “that every person in this world should have a friend
like Elita.” I felt the same way about her. It shows you can still be devoted
friends and not see one another. After her husband passed on a few years ago; I
asked her out to dinner several times and that we would pick her up and take
her home. She declined saying she did not go out much.

After her not doing my hair anymore, I had several different
ones do it at different times. I almost do not remember their names. Some I do
and some I do not care to even give a thought. I had a dear one named Dee and
she did my hair for about fifteen years and my mom’s too. My mom use to say
that “Dee had golden hands.” She left to pursue the making of custom made fancy
and expensive ballroom dance gowns and she has been quite successful. When Mom
died, she came to the house of mourning to see us. Dee was a kind and caring
hair stylist and I told her once that her name stood for Dee-lightful. I have
seen her through the years at ballroom dance competitions where we both
frequent. Once I saw her and her husband clapping for me when I did an
exhibition dance and I saw it on the video I had taken.

When the kids were small, I had a barber do my son’s hair
and the shop was located in the Hess Shoe Store on Belvedere Avenue. The theory
behind it being there was I believe that maybe you would buy the kid new shoes
and get his or her haircut at the same time. It is like getting your
prescription filled at the food store while you are shopping there.

The barber was a nice young fellow and all the kids liked
him. When we were in Denmark, my son wanted to bring him home a gift. So we
found a man’s comb in a case and we bought it for him. His name I believe was Mr.
Ray. Once years ago, my husband and I were in a restaurant and we saw him and
we all recognized each other and he asked about my son and we told him of
course, he was all grown up by then and had a son himself. He remembered the
gift from Denmark.

I had a hairstylist who did my hair for many years and she
also did it for the weekend I danced in a competition out near the BWI airport
area mentioned above with Dee.

She won the ten million lottery here which in about 1991 or
so was considered a big one. Now days the lotteries are worth 100 million or
more. Needless to say, she left working at the salon a few months later after
winning it. A year or so later,my daughter and I were shopping in Target, and
we marveled, there she was, the millionaire and she was standing in line like
us, buying toothpaste and essentials, just like us who were non-millionaires.

You think of rich people not doing regular and everyday
tasks. Of course, they still need these fundamental and necessary things.

When I went to Jerome’s hair salon, I got a section of my
front brunette hair made blonde. It cost the high sum of five dollars plus tip
to do it and I was quite ahead of my own time. Now ninety percent of all women,
young and old have these streaks called highlights and low lights done all the time.
Then in about 1957, it really showed up in the wearer quite prominently. My
husband (then boyfriend) even made a comment while courting me. He said “ I
cannot take you home to meet my mother with it like that.”

I did not change it, which was for sure. I was doing my own
thing way before many others were doing the ordinary thing. Virginia use to
race cars before she married which was doing her own thing. Dee use to ballroom
dance many nights a week doing her own thing. The lottery winner did her own
thing in great style with the over three hundred thousand she got clear after
taxes by buying a gorgeous and tremendous size house. In those days, you did
not take the grand sum, for taxes sake, you split it up for 20 years in
receiving it.

So perhaps hair makes you do things differently than others
did in those days. Blonde hair thick front piece alongside of dark brunette
hair, making ballroom dance dresses for others, big houses, and getting a
haircut in a shoe store, friends for over fifty years and collages of my
grandchildren are all interesting incidents having to do with hair cutting and
hair do’s. I even started my ballroom dancing activities because Dee was a
ballroom dancer and since I had always wanted to become one, I and we started
dance lessons in 1977 when I was going to her for my hairdo.

Who was it in the Bible, who had his hair shorn and he lost
his strength? Samson.

For we who go and get our hair done weekly or semiweekly, we
feel strong as Samson because we know we look real pretty and for others of us
who are able to do it themselves at home, hair means lots of happy times for us
and we caress our hair with love, because it is a huge part of who we are and
think we are.

This week I did not get my hair done at the salon (formerly called
beauty shop) and I think I am still a
pretty senior lady who is looking a bit different on the outside, but I have
discovered, it is still me, right there inside and even outside. It is still me
and that is fine, of course next Friday, I will become the ‘other’ me and the
two of ‘me’ are still the same me. I am the same person with a slightly
different look. This is OK for the next five days and then I, the real me
returns.

Blonde hair with darker streaks (reversed from the 1957 era),
so many years older and now a senior for sure, a wife, a mother, a Grammie, a writer and when I think about my
hair, I ponder and reflect and I am glad it is all still there and how hair
does make a difference in our lives. I see on television several talk show
ladies who wear different wigs on each show every day and they talk about it
freely. I wonder how much they have
missed not having the hair stylist acquaintances I have known and my Virginia
who I truly loved as my friend. Neither of us had a sister, she was an only
child and I had a brother, so we were really sisters and that is truly nice to
remember.

She always signed her greeting cards to me “Love and hugs.”
This is what it was and it still is, much love and surely many hugs. It all
came about because of hair. Samson may have lost his strength because of his
hair loss; I gained a dear sister from my hair.